Group Financial Accountant (part qualified / Finalist level) - SRM RECRUITMENT LIMITED : Job Details

SRM Recruitment are partnering with a rapidly growing, private equity (PE) backed real estate business to recruit a Group Financial Accountant for their head office team.

This role is targeted at a candidate in/around Finalist level, who ideally has some level of experience in a financial accounting role working across a group setup.

This role will play a pivotal role in the continued growth of the group, in delivering high quality and accurate financial information to senior leadership and build processes to coordinate the regional teams to deliver regular and accurate reporting.

Responsibilities:

Group reporting and control

• Develop and implement standardised group reporting procedures to ensure consistency and accuracy in the financial data across all entities, namely inter-company postings and investments.
• Coordinate with regional finance teams to gather, consolidate, and validate financial information for reporting in management accounts, including preparing consolidated reporting and materials for the Board.
• Continuously review and improve reporting processes to streamline operations and enhance efficiency.
• CAPEX reporting – as our client is a real estate business, you'll work with the regions to understand how their development of spend against initial budgets, as well as ensuring consistency in the treatment of capex across the group. Business partnering to understand and ensure reports provided accurately reflect and capture forecasts.
• Work with FP&A team to aid with NetSuite outputs or financial reporting support on strategic projects.

Systems optimisation:

• Assist with the NetSuite optimisation and continued drive for automation and efficiencies, such implementing new inter-company tools and loan tools.
• Be a ‘go-to’ across the group on accounting methodology and financial system functionality.
• Have a clear road-map on implementation and communicating updates to the central leadership team, with clear inputs needed for next steps and resolving blockages.

Management of third-parties and bringing in-house accounting functions:

• Conduct detailed process "walk-throughs" with third-party accountants to document current workflows, timelines, and accounting treatments.
• Design and set up new processes in the group systems, ensuring compliance with group/head office requirements.
• Train and hand over to the relevant regional finance counterpart, ensuring full understanding of process steps and controls [travelling to regions where required].
• Oversee the transition period to ensure minimal disruption to ongoing reporting and compliance.
• Provide ongoing monitoring, troubleshooting, and support to the regional team post-handover.

Establishing monthly close processes:

• Design and implement a comprehensive monthly close process, ensuring adherence to timelines and accuracy in financial reporting.
• Collaborate with finance teams in different regions to standardise close procedures and resolve any discrepancies or issues in a timely manner.
• Provide guidance and support to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and accounting standard during the close process.
• Review accuracy of monthly postings across regions, paying attention to nominal and department to ensure financial information can be relied upon for variance analysis.

Other areas of focus:

• Manage bookkeeping for the head office group entity, consisting of (but not limited to); supplier payments, managing third party payroll provider, VAT returns and statutory accounts.
• Liaise and manage the third party accountants, setting up regular calls and understanding requests, communicating deadlines and tracking compliance tasks ahead of time.

Our client is looking for a candidate with the following profile/skills and background:

• Part-qualified or Finalist level accountant (CIMA / ACCA etc) with probably circa 3-5 years experience.
• Robust technical understanding of reporting and reporting standards such as IFRS.
• Prior experience in working in multinational group environment (ideally)
• Strong accounting base with understanding of commercial business activity.
• Self-starter and confidence in communicating with senior stakeholders.
• Experience with NetSuite would be beneficial.

Our client offers a hybrid working policy and are based in a convenient, central London location.